Friday, April 07, 2006

Famous Last Words

Funneled out by KillerI am sitting in my apartment, the news is continuously spouting off warnings about impending doom and destruction at the hands of tornados that are about to strike, and now the civil warning sirens are going off outside. So, either a tornado has been spotted, or the Japanese have finally decided to bomb us. I have a dangerously low level of concern with weather warnings. I have never been scared in bad weather. During tornado threats, back in the good old Southern, public school days, when all the kids were forced to sit in the hall with your head between your legs, I was never worried about a tornado actually crushing the school. My thoughts were more troubled with whether I was wearing clean underwear. I did not want to spend the next thirty minutes with my nose stuck between my legs smelling three day old tighty whiteys.I spent almost three years living throughout California and I am still pissed off I never got to experience an earthquake. I came close once. I was across the bay from San Francisco in Berkeley, getting my drink on, when a small tremor shook San Francisco. A good friend of mine was in her apartment, asleep on the couch, when it hit. She woke up and immediately thought her blind, geriatric guinea pig had gotten out of his cage, found his way under the couch and started shaking it. She did not even realize it was an earthquake until hours later. All I wanted was for one chance to have to dash to the nearest doorway and stand there, because that is apparently what you are supposed to do.We spent the summer traveling through Thailand not too long after the giant tsunami hit. We got to see a lot of the destruction and hear plenty of first hand accounts, but missed the big show. I am not saying I would want to be in a huge devastating tsunami, but maybe a small one. Maybe one that, while sitting in a beach front bar, a small wave knocks me off my barstool.The threat of tornados has not deterred the downtown traffic yet. I can see all the people filing into the Fed Ex Forum to see the basketball game tonight. Maybe they can not hear the racket.I don't know why these damn civil warning sirens are blaring. It has not even rained here yet. It is actually nice out. A cool breeze, with a few dark clouds, that is how I like it. I think I will go up to the roof and toss ice cubes down to the street and make people think it has started to hail.For official purposes, if I end up getting carried away by a tornado today, give Karma a big high five for me, etch this blog entry on my head stone, and thank Darwin that I made the gene pool stronger by not getting to reproduce.